Kats Cruise to Cross Country Championships
Columbia Falls wins first cross country title in program history; Bigfork claims Class B title after 46-year drought
By Micah Drew
Two miles into the state cross country championships in Missoula, Columbia Falls had two runners in the lead pack of six. Junior Siri Erickson glided through the two-mile mark in second with senior teammate Hannah Sempf just steps behind her.
All season the two runners had traded off as the Wildkats’ number one runner, and both were favorites to win the individual title heading into the final race.
Columbia Falls coach Jim Peacock knew that after last year’s runner-up finish, his girls were poised to make the podium. Earlier in the season he had taken meet results and worked out various scoring scenarios between the Wildkats, defending champion Hardin, and Bitterroot powerhouse Corvallis. He knew the team title might be determined by just a few places at the end of the race.
A cross country team’s scores is the aggregate of the top five runners’ finishing places, with the low score coming out victorious. As the finish line clock ticked over the 20-minute mark, the Wildkats couldn’t have asked for a better start to their scoring as Sempf sprinted down the home stretch with a huge grin on her face and nobody ahead of her.
It was about then that Peacock started to feel concerned. Throughout the season it was a coin-flip which runner would win the intersquad dual, and in all but a single race the teammates had been separated by three runners or less, which was also the case with a mile to go in the state meet.
In the last 400 meters of the race, however, Erickson was slipping backwards through the crowd of runners. Her form fell apart, her face appeared ghost-white and she was weaving all over the course.
“Right then I wasn’t sure if she was going to make it,” Peacock said. “When I got to about 200 to go, she came by and was running down the right side of the course right up against the flags and spectators because that was the only way she could tell where the course was.”
“She disappeared out of my view in the last 100 meter straightaway and I did not know if she would make it to the finish line,” Peacock said. “I was picturing her on the side of the course with medical attention and if she didn’t make it to the line our team would have fallen out of the trophies.”
But Erickson did make it across the line flanked by a teammate and a Corvallis runner, all crossing the line in the same stride.
“It takes a special person to know that’s the kind of misery you’re going to drive yourself to,” Peacock said. “I’ve been around running a long time and I’ve known a lot of runners and I don’t know many runners that have been able to drive themselves to the place she drives herself to week after week when she’s racing.”
“She knows what’s coming and she still steps up and accepts it and says, ‘let’s go do this.’”
With all runners intact and across the line, it became a waiting game.
In contrast to previous years, when results could be found instantaneously online, the host coach had decided to issue a blackout of all results by the timing company in order to build excitement for the winners.
The Class A runners congregated by the announcer’s stand a little ways past the finish and listened as the top 10 teams were announced. When it came to the final three podium teams, the Wildkats were a huddle of blue, anxiously waiting for each announcement.
Several Wildkats yelled in excitement when defending champion Hardin was announced in third place.
“I’ve been around the sport a while now, and I haven’t seen an awards ceremony like that where they build the anticipation and it just adds to the total experience for the kids,” Peacock said. “There were a lot of wet eyes and it was pretty awesome.”
Then the sentence that cut through the anticipation: in second place, Corvallis.
A recovered Erickson let out a scream of joy. Columbia Falls secured the program’s first girls state title by a mere 7 points.
“It’s been a goal of ours for the last few years and hearing it was just amazing,” Sempf said.
For Sempf, her win marked a return of Flathead Valley runners to the top of the state cross country podium, adding to a dynastic stretch that’s seen a local runner win an individual title every year except 2020. Sempf joins Columbia Falls harriers Derrick Williams (2011) and Samantha Mundel (2014).
“There’s times when you’re running and you’re asking yourself, ‘OK, what do I want and what am I willing to settle for?’” Peacock said. “And Hannah was fighting those demons just like any other runner.”
“She had to answer that question several times while she was running and she just kept saying, ‘No, I’m in this and I can do this.’”
Bigfork Breaks 46-Year Boys Drought
Bigfork runners have a cross country legacy in recent years that’s been centered on the Morley family. Makena won four straight titles from 2011-2014, her younger brother Logan won in 2014 and 2015, and sister Brynn won 2015-2017. The girls won a team title in 2015, led by Brynn’s first place finish.
Then came a post-Morley lull.
Last year, Bigfork was barely able to pull together a scoring team of boys — and just two girls ran.
This year, the Vikings are starting a new era.
Twelve boys and six girls came out for the team under the direction of new head coach Ryan Nollan and his approach towards training and racing paid off as the Vikings won the first boys state title since 1975. Their nine-spot jump in the results from last year is one of the biggest single-season jumps for a team in recent years.
“We definitely didn’t think about state championships at the beginning,” Nollan said. “But we sat down after the track season and figured there were six or so boys there that were pretty good. We asked them what they wanted to do, if they wanted to train over the summer and try to do something in cross and they said they wanted to make a run at it.”
In the first meet of the season, the Vikings beat a Eureka squad that, while running without its No. 3 runner, was coming off back-to-back state titles. The next week, Bigfork took down Class A Columbia Falls, just a year removed from their own back-to-back state titles.
Towards the end of the season, the prospects began to look even better for the Vikings. A hypothetical analysis of the top teams in the state showed a half-dozen teams within a few points of each other, including Bigfork.
“Being a first year coach, I’ve been around cross country, but I’d never done that kind of analytics looking at state, so I had no idea what to expect,” Nollan said. “But those boys, they love to race and really want to win so we talked about how we had a chance and that just fueled them.”
Bigfork was led by sophomore Jack Jensen who finished third in 16:58.
“To have it come to fruition, after putting in the hard work, there was just this contentment, this kind of relief afterwards,” Nollan said. “To be thinking about this for so long and working so hard, and have it work out the way we thought, it’s just a lot of fun.”
